Alex Ruber virtually grew up thrifting. His mom, an immigrant who escaped communist Romania and moved to Italy, then Canada, typically introduced him alongside to secondhand shops and Sunday flea markets when he was a toddler. Collectively, mom and son would hunt for distinctive gadgets. “I remember getting my first piano literally from a flea market,” he says. “For me, it was like a treasure hunt.”
Quick ahead 20 years, and Ruber, a former Apple software program engineer now based mostly in San Francisco, is the cofounder of a brand new AI-powered search engine platform designed to duplicate the fun of thrifting, however on-line. The location, referred to as Encore, aggregates gadgets from a whole lot of resale web sites and helps consumers discover esoteric and distinctive gadgets—the proverbial needles within the haystack. What makes Encore completely different is that the positioning doesn’t simply seek for phrases on Fb Market or eBay, however reasonably it asks the consumer to explain what they’re searching for in the identical manner they’d describe it to a good friend.
Courtesy of Encore
Because of its giant language mannequin know-how, Encore lets consumers run actually particular searches, with queries reminiscent of: “dress like the one Carrie Bradshaw wore in season 6, episode 12, in a size 0 or 2.” Or “mid-century modern dining table in walnut finish but it has to have leaves to accommodate eight guests or more.” Consumers can edit their search and kind a follow-up immediate like “rectangular table only” or “under $1,500.” And if the positioning attracts a clean, the consumer can toggle a button and seek for new gadgets.
The final word purpose? “To become the Perplexity of online shopping,” says Ruber, who cofounded Encore with former Twitter and Asana engineer, Parth Chopra.
Purchasing Spree
Everybody who loves to purchase issues secondhand has a motive for doing so. Some are searching for a discount, others need to scale back the carbon footprint related to large polluters just like the fast-fashion and fast-furniture industries. Others but benefit from the decrease barrier to entry for luxurious gadgets. In consequence, the worldwide resale market is booming.
Encore launched in June and has 50,000 searches monthly, with 25 p.c month-on-month development for searches. It’s one in all many firms making an attempt to make secondhand procuring simpler and extra enjoyable by offering a extra refined consumer expertise than the search aggregators which have come earlier than. The Beni app, for instance, allows you to sort “checkbeni.com/” in front of any product URL to see whether a secondhand version exists on various resale marketplace websites. Meanwhile, the Berlin-based Faircado has built a browser extension that lets you browse for items as you normally would, and pops up with “pre-loved” alternatives when they’re available. (The Encore team started with a website so anyone could access the site from any device, but they are also launching an app in the next few months.)
Encore is using a blend of GPT-4 and its own computer model, which is a fine-tuned version of GPT that the company trained on some fashion and ecommerce datasets so it could recognize various brands, styles, and aesthetics. People using the free version get 30 to 40 results per search; chronic shoppers willing to pay $36 a year (there are currently a few hundred of them) get twice as many results per search and a few other perks. But unless your query is overly convoluted (think “boxy bomber jacket, with elastics on sleeves, and make it just like the one Tom Cruise wore in Prime Gun 2), Ruber says free customers will get the identical—albeit fewer—outcomes as paying clients.
